Germany is home to 1,300 breweries producing over 5,000 varieties of the beloved potable. Renowned worldwide, Germany's beer is held to high standards, thanks to the nation's "purity" laws ("Reinheitsgebot"), which mandate only malt, hops, yeast and water be used in the brewing process.

The German government -- led by Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition of the right and moderate factions -- is under pressure to embrace fracking and open up some of the nation's bountiful oil shale deposits for extraction. In response, her coalition is looking to put forth a law in Germany's Parliament which would allow fracking in some parts of Germany while prohibiting in regions where it could create the worst seismological or contamination concerns.

But the Brauer-Bund beer association -- the organization that represents the nation's brewers -- is pushing back, complaining that half of brewers use ground-water wells in regions unprotected by the legislation. They argue evidence shows these wells could be contaminated, fouling the beer and marring an industry worth billions to the German economy.

A spokesperson for the organizations tells the UK's Telegraph, "The water has to be pure and more than half Germany's brewers have their own wells which are situated outside areas that could be protected under the government's current planned legislation on fracking. You cannot be sure that the water won't be polluted by chemicals so we have urged the government to carry out more research before it goes ahead with a fracking law."

The brewers may catch a break. The minority opposition -- led by Chancellor Merkel's critics on the left -- is moving to block the bill, effectively stalling the attempt to open the shales to fracking. Whether or not the issue reemerges thus largely boils down to who emerges victorious in September's elections -- but Germany's brewers want their letter to make clear why they're concerned.

The brewers hope that when Oktoberfest -- the world's largest beer festival, attended by 7 million visitors -- is held in Munich this fall, people will be worry about taste, not contamination.

A tsunami hits an antiquated unsafe Japanese nuclear reactor so they immediately shutdown all of their much safer nuckeasr reactors in a country that has no earthquakes or tsunamis!

They then kinda realise that they are up a certain creek with no paddle with no long term way of powering their massive industrial capacity and start fracking but now they don't want to do that either.

I seriously think the greens would only be happy with the extermination of mankind to allow the earth to revert to some pseudo idyllic man free paradise.

Viable alternatives don't just appear out of no where, someone has to invent the technology first.

An inventions don't happen without an incentive. So Germany used the Fukushima disaster to ban nuclear and encourage renewables.These ignorant retards will be inventing the next technologies, while everyone else carries on with burning gas...until it all runs out.

And nuclear power is a lot more expensive than people realise. In the UK, power companies are dropping out one by one from building new nuclear plants because the risks and costs are so high that they demand fixed tariffs at premium rates for 20 years or they won't touch it.

quote: And nuclear power is a lot more expensive than people realise. In the UK, power companies are dropping out one by one from building new nuclear plants because the risks and costs are so high that they demand fixed tariffs at premium rates for 20 years or they won't touch it.

Nuclear power is expensive because the groups hell-bent on opposing it strive to make it so (quite openly, in many cases), only to turn around and say its too expensive.

If I set your car on fire every night and by day riled against the impractically expensive automotive transportation (due to having to purchase a new vehicle daily), you would not be amused.

I don't know where you are getting your numbers from. Nuclear energy is the cleanest, safest and cheapest throughout the world besides China. But then again, China is known to cut so many corners that squares will look like circles.

You call that a biased article?Every article is biased but that is one of the least biased articles. They actually put up real numbers and didn't care much to say BS like "21 out of 35 scientists...."Everything they're saying goes in line with what NRC and NEI are saying.

We've got enough thorium to last thousands of years - IMO nuclear is far and away the most environmentally sound power generation technology - you have to consider the ecological footprint of building offshore wind farms when assessing nuclear vs 'green' technologies.

What is really going to happen is that there will be a shortfall in German energy supplies which will be propped up with Russian gas whilst the polkitcians continue making no decision

It's also the germans who pushed through tariffs on cheap chinese solar panels to protect said industry, causing worries all over the continent the bottom is going to fall out of the solar industry since it depends on those cheap panels for consumer demand.

It's silly too because the parts the german make aren't the actual cells just the stuff around them. High quality stuff too that the chinese simply cannot copy because they don't have the technical knowhow.

It's also the german policy by the way that's causing most of the financial problems in the south of europe. Just so the the euro's cheap and their exports rise. Nobody here thinks it's kinda fishy their economy is the only one who hasn't been affected by the crisis and has actually improved in recent years?

The germans are excellent with technology. But if there's anybody who won't save the world, it'll be them. If there's anybody who will take over the world at some point, now there they are a contender.

German policy forcing the PIIGS to have economic trouble? Wow you're ignorant.

The German Bundesbank is notorious around the world for holding the line on keeping the Euro strong. Just like they did with the DM.

The essential problem - and I'm simplifying to suit your post - is that the easily observable economic policy in regards to currency strength was led by the Bundesbank and was very conservative. You'll notice that, before the international currency crisis, the Euro was strong against any currency you chose: US Dollar, Yen, Wannabe Dollar (Canada, Australia, etc), Yuan... even looked good against the Pound Sterling.

However, under the surface, the national governments of the PIIGS kept really loose reserve ratios for banking, thus diluting the currency under the covers. It kept local country debt more manageable, but it drove risk and the potential of inflation.

You do manage to be correct when you say that Germany benefitted from this in terms of foreign trade. But considering the entire history of German central banking, the influence of the Bundesbank on the ECB (controlling), and the new, strong push for European banking unity, the truth should be obvious. The PIIGS did it to themselves, despite the Germans not because of them.